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WHO: Beleth & Alistair
WHAT: Beleth talking about her very legit plans to become a magister that will definitely go well, also some other stuff.
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Gallows Garden
NOTES: will add if needed!

Beleth arrives to the garden shortly after she gives the invitation, with a basket of cookies in hand. Both to bribe Alistair into a good mood, and because she really wants the cookies. The conversation is one that she's, slowly, been having with the people closest to her, and she hasn't particularly been looking forward to any of them.

Still, she enjoys hanging out with Alistair, so that should help.

When he does arrive, he'll be met with an offer of cookies, and the announcement, "I've decided to become a Magister. Someone in our employ has an empty seat. I could blackmail Certain Guests into letting me in. I imagine it'll go wonderfully."

She does not plan on becoming a magister, but this seems to be the surest way that the two of them have their talks. They start off like this, and only slowly work their way around to the meat of the matter.

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"You'll have to fake magic."

He takes a cookie, and throws himself down on the grass, too, for good measure.

"You could get really long robes and sit on your brother's shoulders."

"Good plan," She sits down after him, with a little more poise and dignity. "That way, they won’t notice that I'm too short to be a Magister."

Is there a height restriction? Well, it hardly matters, since Alistair just solved it.

"There's been so much going on, hasn’t there? It feels like...We've been saying we're at war for a long time, but now it feels like it's really starting. Not just doing skirmishes, anymore. It's been hard to keep track of everything—are you doing alright?"

Alistair has a mouth full of cookie when she asks, and he's only half-swallowed it before he answers with, "Oh, you know. I've seen worse," so it comes out crumby in addition to overly nonchalant. Overly because it's total and utter bullshit. The Blight was bad—and scaled to the number of people handling it, maybe about a level amount of badness-per-person to deal with—but this is worse. Incredibly worse.

Someone has to be experienced and unshaken in the face of horrors, though, so he'll do his best. Especially when it's a horror that's largely the fault of Wardens.

"Are you?"

Edited 2018-09-30 04:10 (UTC)

Beleth doesn’t answer right away. First, she glances at Alistair, studying him thoughtfully, as though trying to discern from his face whether or not he’s telling the truth. But rather than pressing him on it, she turns to study her cookie, instead. Yep, that’s definitely a cookie.

"Arlathvhen had happened right before the...incident in Minrathous. Everything that happened there had seemed so important at the time, but now..." She shrugs, "What is some Dalish politics in the face of the entire world being embroiled in war? What's the news of one woman, compared to the news of hundreds?" On that notes, she takes a bite of her cookie, face clouded.

"It makes me feel...like a small cog in a large clockwork. Helping, but not vital."

Resembling nothing so much as a cat reaching for a bit of food it knows it isn't allowed (Ferelden forgive him, but he is half Orlesian), Alistair moves one elbow in slow motion to poke Beleth in the arm.

He doesn't know the first thing about Dalish politics, and he doesn't think being a cog in a large clockwork is a terrible thing to be, because it means you aren't a single cog trying to stop the world from ending all alone, or however that would work. (If he ever opened up a dwarven clock and realized how easy it would be for one bad cog to ruin everything, he would be a little alarmed.)

"You're vital to me," he says, with a drawl bordering on flirtatious—the surest sign yet that he's utterly forgotten about whatever anyone might once have said on any icy shores with any griffon-y tokens, or at least forgotten to feel strange about it.

One eyebrow raised, Beleth watches but makes no move to stop Alistair and his nefarious elbow. Once his poke is achieved, she leans over to give said elbow a casual flick.

Then he speaks, and Beleth does remember that day, but discovers that neither the memory nor the tone hurt her like they might have, a year ago. That injury has healed, and Beleth is suddenly worried that her news could ruin that. What if it makes things Weird again, the way it was when she first started speaking to him again? But if not now, when? Wouldn’t it be weirder to never tell him?

"I'm engaged." It drops out of her mouth, flat and heavy, a burden her tongue is tired of carrying on its tip. "My mother arranged it, but I agreed. To help get clans to support some of the changes Sorrel is trying to push." She shrugs. "It seemed unimportant, in light of all the disasters going on."

She says I'm engaged and Alistair's eyebrows go up, and his mouth opens—not in shock, but to say, to who—to whom?—whatever, whichever. His first half-formed thoughts are of the men he's seen her with here. In any capacity. He had no idea she was even seeing anyone—

But: oh. Not that sort of engagement.

He's not outraged on her behalf, exactly. Marriages for money and politics are hardly new or exclusive to any one race. (For better or worse, he doesn't know how narrowly he avoided one himself; Cousland never floated the possibility before making arrangements for his own future.) And she had a say at all, it sounds like, so that's better than some.

Still, it's a little sad.

"Heeeey, what? It's not unimportant," he says instead, sitting up straighter and not eating more cookie to show just how important it is. "It's your life. Who is he? Did you meet him?"

"My personal life doesn’t seem important in the face of everything else that’s been happening." She says it with a shrug, relieved that Alistair is neither raging nor congratulating her. She'll decide how she wants people to respond once she decides how she feels about it, which—Allocating emotions to the situation means that it’s real, and happening, and she has to decide how to deal with it.

"His name is Sellion, and he’s the First for a fairly influential clan—a little smaller than Ashara, but they do well for themselves, and their support will help us bend the ears of the other clans. Sellion himself is..." She pauses, searching for the right description. "...He’s acceptable. I can’t think of anything objectionable about him that was apparent from our meeting. The meeting itself wasn’t very long, but we agreed to write to each other so we can become acquainted, even while I’m busy with my work here."

“Well that’s.”

That’s a thing, that is happening. Alistair resumes eating, but in a thoughtful way, chewing slowly to give him more time to think about it. He doesn’t know very many married people. Wardens who aren’t already married when they join usually know better than to inflict their lives on anyone else in any binding way.

“That’s good,” he says, “I guess?” Tell him if it isn’t good. “If he turns out to be a pillock, can you change your mind?”

"Oh, yes. The Dalish arrange matches, but they are all optional. If two people can't stand each other, it would be foolish to make them spend their lives together." It's practical, really. The Dalish survive through cooperation, and a couple who despise each other aren't going to be as quick to have children. And the Dalish are, if nothing else, practical in their need to survive.

"However," And here Beleth tilts her head, grabbing herself a cookie and breaking it into pieces. "My mother has made it clear that she thinks it's the best match for me. Which means that she might not take me turning it down very well--She'll do it, of course, but." There's a pause for popping a piece of cookie into her mouth, and for thought. "Well. You've met her before."

"Mothers," Alistair says, like he might say Orlesians, or darkspawn.

(As if he knows much about them. He does know a little bit more than he used to—he thinks Fiona does care what he gets up to, even if she takes hands-off parenting to the extreme—but still, not much.)

Considering his cookie, casually, he adds, "If you ever need someone to kidnap her, and carry her very far away, and set her down in the middle of nowhere so it takes her a few months to find her way back," which she would, probably, like a cat, "I would be happy to. Or your—Sellion."

"She's doing what she thinks is best," Beleth replies dully, in a tone that says that she may believe it, but that doesn't necessarily mean she likes it.

"The Dalish people are ever edging closer to irrelevance. To being wiped out. We are killed, or die, or people leave--Though Sorrel's suggestions should help with that--but we have to replenish our numbers somehow. I've been working to change minds about allowing fl--city elves to join our number, but progress is, as it is everywhere in Thedas, slow."

She breaks off a piece of a cookie, inspects it. "But there's one tried and true method, that we've done with success up until this point. Which is simply making sure we have enough children to continue." And she pops the piece of cookie in her mouth. "...But that's a discussion for another time." And another audience. It's not like Alistair will have much to offer about the entire Dalish Situation. "Thank you for the offer, though. I'll keep it in mind."

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